Democracy conquers software and product development as well as knowledge management

Björn Swierczek, co-developer of the open source software LiquidFeedback, is presenting a prototype of a new technology to the public today. It combines the concepts of LiquidFeedback with revision control systems, such as the software “Git” by the Linux developer Linus Torvalds. This allows a democratic software and product development as well as broad democratizing of collaborative knowledge management. Swierczek presents a full implementation of the necessary interfaces. The required add-on will be integrated in LiquidFeedback shortly.

“Until today, particular decisions within the software and product development have to be decided by privileged people”, Swierczek explains. “The proposed technology can democratize the decision making process. The same is true for conflict resolution in collaborative projects, such as the free encyclopedia Wikipedia.”

The concept is published in the current issue of “The Liquid Democracy Journal”. Other topics of this issue are concepts to improve the proposition development process of LiquidFeedback which allows the number of participants to grow ad infinitum, as well as an excursus on Google's in-house experiments using liquid democracy voting systems with Google+.

LiquidFeedback is an independent open source project published under MIT license by the Public Software Group of Berlin, Germany. LiquidFeedback is not affiliated with any political party or movement. The developers of LiquidFeedback have teamed up in the Interaktive Demokratie e. V. - Association for Interactive Democracy to promote the use of electronic media for democratic processes.

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LiquidFeedback (left) manages a revision control system (right)Screenshot: IAD